Daisychains
by Kaitsy
Summary: Lily and Sirius find comfort in the strangest of places on a particularly tragic evening. No cheating and a brief flashback of romantic involvement. About friendship and James makes an appearance, too. Rated for language.


**"Daisychains"**

**Hi, so another oneshot. Lily and Sirius being the main characters. I'm just really in love with the pairing lately, so. Anyway, it's quite late and I wrote most of this tonight, just creative flow. It might be a bit off, a bit funny but I'm dealing with something and sort of enjoying these oneshots. This may be my favourite, ever. It is obviously titled Daisychains for no reason other than the song, which I love. I could not think of a more fitting title, as I said - it's late. Take care!**

**abc.**

_Listen now, my sweet Anne  
__i never meant to cause you pain  
__we could've spent all summer sitting here  
__making daisychains  
__i lie awake at night  
__staring at my roof  
__now you're gone_

_for weeks i've had your pretty face hanging in my brain  
__it's suspended like the reflection in a window pane  
__you hang just like a ghost  
__over city streets  
__now you're gone_

_how could i begin to finish what i couldn't start  
__i'm more General Haig than Napoleon Bonaparte  
__go now, just leave  
__no more words, please  
__now you're gon__e_

_oh, listen now my sweet Anne  
__i never meant to cause you pain  
__we could've spent all summer sitting here  
__making daisychains  
__i lie awake at night  
__staring at my roof  
__now you're gone.  
_  
"**Daisychains", by Youth Group.**

**Abc.**

Lily Evans – rather, Potter, she herself forgot they were married at times – lay in bed on a mild May evening. She never could sleep well when tragedy befell them and this time it hit her rather hard. It seemed more real now, for some reason, and maybe it was because Lily went to school with her and they were the same age – but it all just seemed to crash that night.

Marlene had died earlier that day – it was well after midnight now, closer to two – and even as Lily thought the words they did not mean anything to her. _Marlene's dead_, she thought to herself over and over and all she did was blink and breathe slowly, unable to connect meaning to words.

It was the worst death so far for her. A lot of people had died since she and James had graduated Hogwarts and she was never close with most of them, not connected with them like she had been Marlene. She'd shared a dorm with her, told her secrets, invited her to their small wedding. She had known Marlene and Lily could see herself reflected in her. It scared her to think that. To think – if Marlene can be offed, why not me?

They were not invincible.

James was not home, he was brave and strong and oh, she loved him. A meeting was held at headquarters after they heard of Marlene's death. Death Eaters, they had been told. Killed her, killed her entire family. One swish of a wand and they were all gone. It panged Lily a bit to imagine her friend going in such an insulting, defenseless way. There's nothing you can do when that green light flashes and Lily could see it in her mind – she had witnessed it only once before on a particularly horrible mission for the Order – and each time her breath caught and she saw Marlene's pretty face.

She rested her hands on her stomach, trying and failing to shut her eyes and drift off to sleep yet again. Even though it was just May and really quite nice and mild, she was uncomfortable and hot and she felt sticky beneath the covers. Being seven months pregnant did not quite help the situation and she felt bitter about it sometimes. She had to sit home in bed, swollen and miserable and hot when her friend had just died and James ran off to do the saving, to do the planning.

It was not as if getting pregnant wasn't planned. It was planned and she was just twenty but felt plenty prepared for it. If they wanted a family, wanted to start some sort of life together they knew they had to start soon and – well – they just sort of blindly fell into post-marital bliss and decided to get on with it.

And then she was pregnant in the middle of a war and people looked at them as if they had stupid stamped onto their foreheads. Stupid, she was sure they thought, for bringing yet another life into the world to be put at risk by Voldemort and his growing supporters. A little baby half-blood and Lily could not help but feel guilty at times.

Sometimes she forgot what it felt like to be well and happy and alive. She forgot the way it felt to be in love with James at Hogwarts. That was ideal to her, to be with him there. There was no real life to deal with and perhaps she was naive and kind of reckless to consider it that way. It was mostly sad, she decided, that she had felt the best while tucked away in some remote corner of Europe, away from the rest of the world.

It was sad that she could not get a life together now.

She could hear the television from down in the living room and it panicked her – not that the television had come on since she'd gone to bed and since her husband had left – but that she was _not_panicked about it. She was not curious about who had traipsed into her home, settled themselves down on her chesterfield and relaxed in front of her television. She was sort of disconnected, she felt, from her life and so much so that she did not notice very crucial, important things.

_Marlene's dead,_ her mind screamed and she just sighed and sat up, bothered that she had to move and waddle down the stairs and find out which one of the Marauders had come in during the night. Because, no doubt, it was Remus or Sirius or Peter just sitting down there eating their food.

Remus was responsible and sweet and worried for Lily when James forgot to. When James was in a rush, in a hurry to get to an Order meeting, in a hurry to find out the next mission – Remus would walk slow with Lily and hold open doors and make sure that she was okay. James was doting enough and was just kind of absent-minded when he had other things on his mind. She did not really care, as long as he was still happy and passionate and she was thankful for Remus.

And also doubtful that it was he perched in her living room making a mess of crumbs on the couch. He was too considerate for that and would more likely have come up the stairs to check on her.

Peter was kind of strange and offbeat but he had been a good friend, James would tell her, over the years. He needed friends himself and Peter had joined them on adventures and in secrets and he was loyal – something inside of her gave a silent sort of twitch – and quiet and did the best he could. He also had a very sweet mother who took great care of him and he did not often come round when James was not home, so she was also doubtful that it was he in her living room, watching her Muggle device.

So, that left Sirius, of course. He'd been doing this a lot lately, when times got particularly tough and strained and oftentimes she ignored him. Not because she did not care for him or appreciate the friendship, brotherhood that he offered James, but because he was really quite a lot to handle. She would roll her eyes when Sirius would visit James, making a loud entrance and banging into the house and she would think – well, she would have to learn to care for a child...

"Sirius," she sighed coming down the stairs and turning into the room where the television light glowed from. These boys – aside from Remus – had always been and would always be quite fascinated with Muggle things and she sometimes felt like she was sitting beside them in Muggle Studies again and she would take these trips through time a lot.

It made her happy and then nostalgic and eventually completely depressed.

"Sirius," she repeated again and she knew she was right, that it was him because his boots were kicked off beside the sofa and leather jacket tossed over it's arm and –

"Oh!" Lily shouted, one hand on her protruding stomach and the other covering her mouth. There, on her television screen, were a pair of – given the generous size of the screen – huge boobs. Completely bared and sort of bouncing there as the owner of them did some sort of vulgar act with her mouth.

"I'm sorry, well, what the _hell_ are you,-" She had began backing from the room, still genuinely surprised that Sirius Black was sat there watching bad basic cable porn while she slept upstairs.

"No, I'm not doing that." And he didn't sound as if he were, because he sounded bored and tired and just generally listless, so she came back into the room, peering through her fingers (the bouncing boobs were still on the screen and she wondered how she did not hear those horribly fake sounds coming from that horribly fake blonde earlier) and making sure that he was, in fact, decent.

"Then what _are_ you doing? Why are you watching it?" Lily asked and James thought she was prettiest when her hair was a mess of curls like it was just then and she wore a white tank top and a pair of dark blue sweatpants and makeup was something she had long ago abandoned.

Sirius was not sure when he thought Lily was her prettiest because as James's best friend, he did not often bother to dwell on it or think about her like that, unless James asked his opinion, and that is why Sirius was a great friend.

"Because it's so _bad_," he said and he did not raise his eyes from the fake bouncing boobs to look at Lily, standing there all pregnant and glowy in the light from the television. "It's real bad, isn't it? Girls don't sound like that. Do you sound like that? I've never heard a girl sound like that." As he spoke the girl panted and shouted and moaned in this really irritating way and if Sirius had been a bit turned on by the boobs, the pathetic sounds coming from her mouth probably would've taken care of it.

"No, they don't usually sound like that..." She admitted and it occurred to her that maybe he was grieving – it did sound really stupid – and this was his way of doing it. But then she laughed aloud at the thought.

"Bet you wish James could make you sound like that." And it was sexual and vulgar but his heart wasn't in it and he still stared at the screen but she was not offended, rather felt like he was just unable to face a real person just then.

It was with a sigh that she sat beside him on the couch and her cheeks were beginning to flush as the lewd acts continued – again, not because it got her going but because she realized those big bouncing boobs may have been fake but in _reality_, hers were probably as large, if not larger.

"Great, I'm pornographic," she muttered, adjusting her shirt and tugging the afghan over her shoulders. She did not know if Sirius cared or looked but she did not feel comfortable with it.

He did not say anything, just offered a half-hearted grin and she could feel his detachment sitting alongside hers and they were a kind of mismatched yet completely corresponding pair.

"It's weird you're pregnant," Sirius told her and it was blatant and true and the bad porn sex just continued on screen and it was girl-on-girl but they were both really very bad at it. Lily would not like if anyone kissed her with that much tongue all over face, including another very heavy-chested girl.

"I mean, not really weird you're pregnant – you just look kind of great, you know, tits and all and the stomach's kind of endearing, I guess – but the result is going to be weird. A _baby_, that's...that's going to be weird."

Lily folded her hands in her lap and thought to herself that their were stranger things in the world than her and James having a baby but let the silence politely pass for a moment before saying "thanks, Sirius" with a laugh.

He did not return the gesture, just shrugged and there was something horribly, drunkenly sad about him.

"Oh!" Lily covered her mouth with her hand again and this was kind of really graphic for late-night television porn and she had never seen her _own_...Well, it was detail-oriented, certainly.

"You know who else had great tits?" Sirius did not seem to notice how really disgustingly beyond-sexual this had become. It was just unnecessary now.

"Um, aside from me? No, not sure..." She went along with it and had never wanted James by her side more than now, when his best friend was apparently internally falling apart.

"Marlene had really, really great boobs, didn't she?"

_Oh_, Lily thought to herself and this time it had nothing to do with the huge boobs and shaved areas fully exposed on the screen and they could have at least hired an actor with a cute butt. This man was well past his prime and his butt was actually kind of saggy...

But _oh,_ Lily realized and her whole face fell, gone was the curiosity she held for him and replaced was absolute empathy and sadness. She was not the only one numbly feeling her way through this and she had not even been –

"She did have nice boobs and were you in love with her?"

Lily had never been in love with Marlene McKinnon and maybe Sirius had and maybe his heart was broken along with his spirit and hope and it sent a depressing chill through her body.

"I don't know," he mumbled and for the first time Lily's eyes prickled with tears and her nose stung and she had been quite selfish over the last few months, basically feeling sorry for herself and her world that was rapidly spinning out of control. She did not think about Sirius Black and his bad life and his good friends and all of his girls. She did not think, until that very moment, just how good he was and how important he had been in James's life.

"I could have, you know. It was something, certainly. _She_ was something..." Sirius shook his head and hands came up to cover his face, massage his temple and she decided that even if he did not know if he loved Marlene or not – she, Lily, decided she loved him.

"I'm sorry, Sirius," she reached a hand out for him and was uncertain of where to place it – shoulder, face, leg – but then rested it upon first his cheek, grazed it down his neck, squeezed his shoulder and then knee and eventually laced his fingers through her own.

She had kissed Sirius one time in sixth year when she had been drunk and did not know if he had been or not, but it meant very little to her. She knew so little about him – just that he was handsome and suave and walked around like he owned the school and few were apt to argue with him – and just sort of was tired of James and his pursuit. So, one Saturday when they were crammed into a booth in the Three Broomsticks, laughing and drinking – unbeknownst to the bar owners – she leaned over and kissed his cheek. Then he had turned and his nose brushed hers and she kissed him right upon the lips and she remembered thinking how scruffy he was against her cheek and in Sirius's mind he thought of her red parted lips and of all the regret in the world.

It was some connection they shared and had forgotten of but would come back to at times like those, when they doubted that they had anything in common, had any sort of caring relationship. They would think of that weekend when they were sixteen and had kissed on the lips in Hogsmeade and how remarkably their lives changed after that.

They would come back to it that night as they sat watching really bad porn – Sirius had a thing for brunettes and this was completely void of any blue-eyed brunettes, undoing their hair from buns and getting down on their knees, so he just sat completely bored and sad – and thinking of poor Marlene McKinnon and poor everybody.

Sometimes when Lily sat alone, or as she sat then with Sirius, quiet and careful and concentrating on her leaping belly, she could remember a time when they were not suffering or when they were not scared. Lily could remember when she was bright-eyed and seventeen and falling in love and she could remember being happy, the world being happy.

Lily sat relying on her pregnancy and Sirius to comfort her that night.

"I know you'll miss her, too," he told her thickly and she nodded along. "And I just want you and James to be safe and well, you know? I want all of us to be."

Lily rested her head on his shoulder, hand curling around his neck and massaging gently because James did that for her when she was really stressed out and really tensed up. Eventually the pornography faded into a test signal and he flicked through the channels until they found some rerunning comedy and Lily cried quietly against his neck, wetting his shirt and willing James to come home.

By the time her husband had come home it was nearly dawn and Lily thought of sleep as some long lost luxury and her head was rested against the arm of the couch, her bottom resting over Sirius's legs, and her own legs spread out to the other end.

James looked like this exhausted, lovely piece of work and she felt like crying again but just because she was so lucky and so hopeful and he dropped his things on the floor, locked the door and came in to find the two people he cared most about.

"I love you," he said and it could have been to either of the two but he kissed Lily's lips and gave Sirius an absolute pained, remorseful look and clapped him on the back. He rubbed his hand over her swollen stomach, some of it peeking out from her top before lifting her feet and sitting down, placing them on his lap as he rubbed them.

"What did you two do all evening?" And if Lily had not been pregnant and weary and had been, well, maybe a learned housewife who knew how to care for her husband – she would've rushed off to the kitchen and made some tea or grabbed him a beer but the best she could do was shift from his friends lap to her husband's laying her head across it and enjoying the warmth he seemed to absolutely radiate. Never mind the wounds on his arms and the premature lines on face, she would have none of it and just lovelove_loved_ him...

"Watched some porn, cried about Marlene, grew up a bit, I think I did..." Sirius offered softly.

James just nodded, gave a tight-lipped smile to his friend and it was a bond that Lily was thankful and willing to witness, to be a part of.

For, summer was approaching and soon the baby would be born and Lily Potter had stars in her eyes until the day she, too...

**abc.**


End file.
